The Limb of the Law of God: The Tablet of the Branch

A retelling based on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volume 2, by Adib Taherzadeh, which examines the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn (Tablet of the Branch). The passages in quotation marks are Bahá'u'lláh's own words from that Tablet, as rendered in the authorized English translation.

When the sealed Will of Bahá'u'lláh was opened nine days after His ascension and the believers heard, for the first time, that they were to turn to "the Most Mighty Branch," the appointment did not fall on them out of a clear sky. For many of them it was the long-awaited confirmation of something Bahá'u'lláh had been unveiling, by degrees, for the better part of thirty years. The Covenant proclaimed at His passing had deep roots — and among the deepest was a Tablet He had revealed in the dark years of Adrianople: the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn, the Tablet of the Branch.

Adib Taherzadeh, in his study of the Tablets of that period, draws out the significance of this remarkable text. It was revealed during the Adrianople exile, in the late 1860s, and addressed to a faithful believer of Khurásán, Mírzá 'Alí-Riḍá. Its theme, however, was not the recipient. Its theme was the station of 'Abdu'l-Bahá — Bahá'u'lláh's eldest Son, then a young man who had shared every step of His Father's banishment since boyhood. In the Tablet of the Branch, Bahá'u'lláh lifted, for the first time in such explicit language, a corner of the veil over who this Son was.

The titles He bestows are extraordinary. 'Abdu'l-Bahá is named "the Trust of God," "this sacred and glorious Being," "this Branch of Holiness," and "the Limb of the Law of God." Each phrase repays slow reading. To call Him "the Limb of the Law of God" is to say that the very Law revealed by Bahá'u'lláh would, in a sense, find its living arm and instrument in this Son. To call Him "the Trust of God" is to mark Him as the One to whom something precious has been confided for safekeeping.

At the heart of the Tablet stands an image that the whole Bahá'í understanding of the Covenant would later rest upon: the image of root and branch. "The Limb of the Law of God," Bahá'u'lláh writes, "hath sprung forth from this Root which God hath firmly implanted in the Ground of His Will." The Root is Bahá'u'lláh's own Revelation, planted by God; the Branch is 'Abdu'l-Bahá, grown from that Root and, the Tablet says, so uplifted as to encompass the whole of creation. The believers, Bahá'u'lláh warns, who would deprive themselves of "the shadow of the Branch" are lost in the wilderness of error. To turn from the Branch is to turn from the Tree itself.

Taherzadeh's point is that the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh was not a single sudden act but an unfolding. The Tablet of the Branch foreshadowed; later Tablets confirmed; and at the very end, the Kitáb-i-'Ahd — the Book of the Covenant, written in Bahá'u'lláh's own hand and opened after His passing — made the whole matter explicit and binding for all time. What the Súriy-i-Ghuṣn had disclosed in the language of root and branch, the Book of the Covenant would set down as a plain command: turn, one and all, your faces toward the Most Mighty Branch. The seed sown in Adrianople came to its harvest in the days of mourning at Bahjí.

There is a tender wisdom in this gradual unveiling. Bahá'u'lláh did not wait until He was gone to reveal where His followers should look. Across the long years of exile He prepared their hearts, naming the Branch, exalting His station, training the believers to recognise in 'Abdu'l-Bahá the One in whom the Cause would be safeguarded. So when the blow of the ascension fell — when the Sun of Bahá set over 'Akká and a whole community was plunged into grief — the way forward was already lit. They were not abandoned to argument and faction. They had been told, gently and then plainly, root and then branch, exactly where the shadow of protection lay.

This is why the Tablet of the Branch belongs to the remembrance of the Ascension. The day of Bahá'u'lláh's passing is the day His earthly guidance ceased — and the day His Covenant, long in preparation, came fully into its own. The believers mourned a Father withdrawn from their sight. But they turned, as He had taught them for thirty years to turn, toward the Branch that had sprung from the Root God had planted; and the Tree of His Cause, far from falling, went on growing.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volume 2, by Adib Taherzadeh.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1977). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (Vol. 2 — Adrianople 1863-68)*. George Ronald.